Policies for Prosperous Descent

“Human society can adapt to diminishing resources in ways analogous to ecosystems. To sustain standards of living, populations will have to decrease. People will either adapt because of foresight or will be forced to because of the declining resources. Some people can migrate to areas where the cycle is in a different phase. For example, in rural areas of developed countries where farming was abandoned in earlier centuries, enough soil and forest restoration has occurred to support rural life again. It will be efficient to use up assets that no longer can be supported. For example, after some population decrease, materials from excess housing can be used to maintain the rest. New specialties concerned with decrease may develop such as “downsizing business management,” and these can run for a small profit. However, choices for coming down that involve environment should be evaluated for public benefit, just as with alternatives for expansion, selecting those that sustain the most real wealth. Already we have an increase in the number of small businesses that restore and resell abandoned household appliances. More old houses are being restored. Garage sales are everywhere” (Odum & Odum, 2001, p. 86).

To form public policy for maximum benefit, select alternatives that maximize useful empower. By restating Lotka’s principle in empower units we recognize that beneficial organization increases intake emergy (first priority) and its efficient use (second priority) on all scales (not just maximizing levels with more energy; not maximizing some levels at the expense of others) (Odum, 1998).

Tranformities provide a general policy principle, which is: Do not use high-quality products for low-quality purposes (Odum & Odum, 2001, p. 69).

Maximizing jobs and the economy requires maximizing the symbiosis of the economy with the environment and its resources (Odum, 1995, p. 367).

Policies for Descent (Odum, PWD draft, 1987):

Change world attitudes to regard coming down as progress towards a prosperous future

Fit the economy and the population to declining resource availability; don’t assume that new technology will find new resources

Use resources to make wealth; don’t sell them to make money

A newly developed energy source may be one already contributing to the economy in environmental work/services

“Most of the emergy from the economy is in the human services (which can be estimated from the costs using the emergy/money ratio= 1 E12 sej/$). Human support has very high energy requirment: 10 to100 million solar emcalories per calorie of human work. Net emergy includes these very high requirements and gets no net emergy for solar technology. Net energy finds human services as negligible calories and leaves them out. Net energy violates the energy hierarchy law by counting energies on different scales as doing equivalent work” (Odum, 2001)

Using electricity for purposes that could use fuel directly, such as electric home heat, is a waste

Circulating more money for high finance, luxury or gambling will not accelerate resource use, economic growth, or generate useful products. Circulation without production is expenditure without value. Finance for profit creates diminished productivity as industries become outdated and lose to competitors overseas

Market prices are not a fair basis for international trade. Human services from less developed nations are worth more in Emergy terms than is paid for them. Raw products contribute 5 to 50 times more to urban centers than is received for them

Cities will decentralize, with less cars and building heights. More decisions will be made at state and local levels rather than nationally. Industries will decentralize. Heavy industries will be smaller and spread world-wide. Job hierarchies will shrink with fewer jobs at the top and middle. Less advertising will be needed. Accidents and disruptions will increase. Natural materials will supplant synthetics, and plastics will be reused

Extended family/cohousing will revive, and active transport will expand

Priorities for community health over individual health will increase, mental health may improve, and healthcare will decentralize

If one sector of the economy is neglected or overemphasized, the economy suffers

International exchanges include pollution, crime, and drugs; damages can be measured with Emergy

Use the new measure of wealth, EMergy, not money, to evaluate resource contributions of the economy

Do not tax, embargo, or otherwise inhibit free use of fuels; fuels are an amplifier that contributes many multiples more to economic wealth than they cost (an exception would be wasteful or luxury uses)

Capitalism and profit are functions of surplus energy and a growth economy; banks will acquire different roles to fund efficient, smaller, lower energy enterprises

Borrowing fails when neither production nor markets can expand; borrowing and high interest rates may become regarded as usury again. Federal deficit financing will result in inflation

Inflation is eliminated when the money circulating is held in constant ratio to the resources being processed

When limited resources cause economic leveling, interest rates may be high to prevent borrowing that can’t be repaid for lack of growth

Policies favor conservation, efficiency, and maintaining existing patterns, with less support for immigration, interstate highways, and oil company depletion allowances

Growth stocks will decline and stocks of companies emphasizing reorganization and contraction of society (remodeling, repair, and adapting to rural living) will rise

Substitute communication for transportation

For a competitive economy, educate all children to develop their abilities to use information, communication, and technology and to adapt to changing conditions

Most advances in technology are less efficient and need more resources to use. Technology typically helps use entrain more energy

A post-industrial, all-service economy is not possible because services, too, depend on resources, agricultural, and industrial production. We can’t all survive by taking in each others’ laundry

A post-industrial information economy requires production elsewhere. We cannot repeal the dependence of all economies on resources; we can just rearrange where we use the resources

Use imported resources first, and local sources second to save valuable storages of local resources

Develop international partnerships and peace by balancing EMergy of exchanges between nations, including trade, migrating people, foreign aid, loans, and culture

Do not attempt to exert military influence beyond the power of the country’s resources

Eliminate the acceptability of waste and replace it with the use of byproducts; reuse or recycle them to nature’s earth processes but don’t store in dumps and landfills. Dispersal is better than incineration or accumulation. There is no away to throw things anymore

Rebuild nature’s natural capital of wetlands, forests, soils, and water

Filter all waste waters from city sewage, street runoff, and agricultural runoff through nature’s filters, the wetland ecosystems

In descent, keep standards of living by allowing leveling of population in proportion to decline in resource use

During economic cutbacks reduce all salaries and wages and not laying by people off

Reduce the yield per acre of agriculture, cutting costs and using more land. Preserve gene pools. Recycling of nutrients will supplant fertilizers. Absorb urban unemployment using tax incentives in a new move to the land, where more self-sufficiency allows lower wages. Federal government could sponsor new homesteading

Abandon the non-utilitarian uses of power in recreation, big cars, and power boats

The water cycle organizes the landscape; using wastewater on agriculture can be good recycling. Wetlands are nature’s kidneys

In the short term, increased CO2 will create more intense extremes in weather; in the longer term, the decline in world fuel consumption will reduce the effects of increased CO2

Information is cheaper to copy than to make from scratch. Information depreciates. Developing shared information requires large resources. Art and literature are powerful amplifiers. Information use increases as growth stops, but declining resources support less information

Education may shift to new life themes, smaller schools with less technology and big sports, and a curriculum thread stressing systems thinking, while storing society’s information and restoring its role for selection and testing of information

Religions may redevelop ethics and values of service, sacrifice, and care of the earth; teaching systems understanding of the context of society within nature

Encourage every person’s initiatives on this new frontier of organizing a lower energy world

As first priority each person should include work for the vitality of the public economy. Do not accept the doctrine that marketplace competition for individual gain alone can generate public welfare